


the wiser morning

by Chrome



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Viktor Nikiforov's soul is owned by the Sea King, but his heart is owned by the Sea King's lovely son.A take on "The Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise", originally written for the Yuri!!! on Ice Fairy Tale Zine.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 20
Kudos: 98





	the wiser morning

In one way, Viktor is lucky: None of them believe in telling him lies. He has known that this day will come since he was a child, so he packs up his things and heads for the seaside on the day that the letter arrives. Yakov has shielded him for as long as he could, but there always comes a time that a son must pay for his father’s mistakes.

So he is resigned to it. He even finds peace in it--the castle where he grew up lay along the shore, and the rising call of the seagulls brings him back to it. He allows himself long minutes on the shore, basking in the nostalgia. So he will go to the Kingdom in the Sea and never leave, because before he was even born a foolish man traded away his soul and then could hardly be bothered to raise him, knowing as he did that his son would never truly belong to him.

So what does it matter? He watches the seagulls, circling, swooping, flashing white on the horizon. A dozen of them land on the sand ahead of him and Viktor thinks nothing of their boldness--seagulls are nothing if not bold--until they begin to shed and grow. In a swirl of white feathers, men rise from the ground and their feathers settle in piles of white fabric as they run.

The last of them is dark-haired, and graceful, and Viktor can hardly take his eyes off of him. He is captivated for a second too long--the man vanishes down the shoreline with the others and Viktor’s call after him is lost in the roar of the waves. With some guilt, he sits beside the man’s robes and waits. After several long minutes, he takes off his own clothes--ambushing a naked man fully clothed is hardly fair.

Then he thinks better of that--because he doesn’t want to come across the wrong way, not when it matters since he’ll never see the man again, but still--just in time for them to be returning. Panicking, he snatches up his clothes and the man’s and darts behind a dune.

The men dress and take off in a flurry of feathers. The last searches fruitlessly for a moment before Viktor calls, “Over here!”

The man comes, reluctant, shuffling. “That’s rude,” he says. “Did you take my clothes?”

“Sort of,” Viktor tells him, half-guilty. “It was an accident. Or, well. I just wanted to speak with you alone. Sorry. Here.” He steps out from behind the dune and holds the man’s clothes out.

The man shrieks. “Why are you--”

“Because you would be? It seemed...fair...well it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Viktor concludes lamely. “Then I thought better of it but you were coming back so I hid over here…”

To his relief, the man is laughing as he takes the clothes from him. He does step to the other side of the dune to dress, which Viktor is a little sad about. It’s a lovely sound, that laugh.

“Put your clothes on, stranger,” the man says.

“What’s your name?” Viktor asks.

“Yuuri.”

“Yuuri,” he says, testing it out. “That’s a beautiful name.”

“What’s yours?” Yuuri asks. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“It’s Viktor,” he says, putting on his own clothes. “You haven’t, and you won’t again.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have to go under the sea forever,” Viktor says, and explains--explains that his father had foolishly traded away the soul of his son to the Sea King, that they had tried to hide him away but the letter had come anyway, and he was going because what else was there to do? “You were so beautiful,” he admits, “That I wanted to talk to you. But it’s sort of silly, since I suppose I’ll never see you again.”

“Are you dressed?” Yuuri asks, sharply.

“Yes,” Viktor says, and Yuuri darts around the dune--regrettably clothed again in white--and pulls Viktor towards the water. “What is it?”

“Well,” Yuuri says. “You will see me again, because the Sea King is my father. And he’s very angry that it’s taken you so long to come.”

“Oh,” Viktor says. “But I will see you again?”

Yuuri pauses with his ankles in the surf, staring at him blankly. “Yes? But I don’t know why you stopped me, if you say it’s because I’m beautiful. All the others are much more beautiful. I’m just a dime a dozen.”

“You are very beautiful,” Viktor says. “Seeing you--perhaps this is a good thing, after all.”

Yuuri’s eyes widen as he looks at him, but he says, “We’ll see.”

***

Only the memory of those wide brown eyes comforts him as he stands before the Sea King, and even that comfort fades when the man speaks. “You have taken too long to come to me, Viktor Nikiforov. I have been owed your soul since before you were born.”

Viktor feels the old resentment slither up his throat. It is not his fault. Why should a child be responsible for the actions of his father, much less the actions taken before he was born? But he does not voice these thoughts. “I am here now,” he says.”

“You are here now,” the Sea King echoes. “And as an apology for being late, you shall build me a garden, a beautiful garden with paths and flowers and trees.”

Viktor nods, dumbly. He has never built a garden before but he has walked through many. He can imagine what a garden might look like, if he designed it.

“Come with me,” the Sea King walks and Viktor follows, automatically. He brings him out of the palace, into a vacant courtyard, four square walls full of nothing but dirt. 

Viktor spins, slowly, taking it in. “A garden,” he repeats.

“By tomorrow morning,” the Sea King says.

The bottom drops out of Viktor’s stomach. “Tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he says. “My garden. Or your head.” Then he turns and goes, without announcement or fanfare, in the way that Viktor supposes kings always go.

Viktor stares at the four walls. Stares at the dirt. Then he just sits down in it and stares some more, because who could build a garden in a night?

Without his permission, tears begin to prick at his eyes. Surely this isn’t how it ends--in a kingdom he never wanted to visit, failing a task he was never meant to succeed, all in service to a bargain made before he was born? The unfairness of it is what finally makes them spill over. He doesn’t deserve this.

“What’s wrong?” says a quiet voice.

He turns, and standing there--beautiful as ever--is Yuuri.

“I’m meant to build a garden,” Viktor says, bitterly. “By tomorrow morning. I--well, you know that’s not possible. Not for me, anyway.”

Yuuri makes a consolatory noise. For a fraction of a second, there is pressure on his shoulder as he starts to lay a hand on it. Then he jerks it back, as though he’s thought better of it, but Viktor instantly regrets the lack of contact. “You’ve had a long day and a long journey. You should go to bed.”

“I suppose this is futile,” Viktor sighs. “Face my fate with a full night’s rest?”

“Don’t worry,” Yuuri says. “Go to bed. The morning is wiser than the evening.”

_ The morning is closer to my death than the evening,  _ Viktor almost says, but there is no point being rude to the only good thing that’s happened to him recently, so he nods and does as Yuuri advises. The bed is large and soft, and despite his apprehension he falls asleep easily.

In the morning he dresses and walks to the not-garden with his head high, ready to face his fate. Though he’d deliberately committed the path to memory, for a moment he thinks he must have made a wrong turn--because the empty courtyard is a beautiful garden, flowers blooming so vibrantly that they spill over the edges of the path, trees towering high above, a little stream bubbling through.

Viktor stands, and stares, taking it all in. He is still standing there, half-stunned, when the Sea King arrives. In the entrance, he stops short, eyeing it all.

“A garden,” he says.

“A garden,” Viktor echoes, hoping his voice isn’t shaking too badly.

“Beautiful,” he says. “You’ve done well.”

“Thank you,” Viktor says. He looks around surreptitiously for Yuuri--because who else could have managed this, but Yuuri?--but the man is nowhere to be found.

“Since this was no trouble for you,” the Sea King says, “Then what I ask next should be no trouble at all, either.”

“I--will do my best,” Viktor says, diplomatically.

The Sea King looks at the stream bubbling through. “Across this stream,” he says, “Build me a bridge of crystal, by tomorrow morning.”

“Crystal!”

“All this in a night,” the Sea King says. “What is one more bridge?”

“Of course,” Viktor says, mechanically. The Sea King stands and watches him for a few minutes, and Viktor makes a show of measuring the distance, looking for the right spot, pacing the length and breadth of the stream. Eventually the man goes, and Viktor’s pacing turns more frantic and less measured.

The day ticks past, slowly, slowly. He watches the sun trace the sky and eventually darts from the garden to the halls to his room and back to the garden, but he cannot find Yuuri anywhere.

The sun drops below the horizon, finally, and in the beautiful garden that Yuuri has made but which has kept him alive only one day longer, Viktor weeps for the second time.

“What’s wrong?” a now-familiar voice asks.

“Your father has asked me to build a bridge,” Viktor says, “Made of crystal, by tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t cry,” Yuuri says, and this time he touches Viktor for just longer than before, long enough to swipe a thumb across his cheek. “Go to bed. You know what they say, the morning is wiser than the evening.”

So he goes to bed. It is hardly a surprise the next morning when he goes to the garden and a bridge of perfect clear crystal gleams across the widest part of the stream.

This time, the Sea King really does seem impressed. “A man with your skills should have a reward,” he says. “You will marry one of my children--if, three times, you can pick them out from the others.”

Viktor nods, uncomprehending. This time, Yuuri finds him in his room, staring at his own feet.

“What’s wrong?”   


“Your father says I’m supposed to marry one of you,” Viktor says. “You, your siblings, I mean. Not--I don’t think there’s multiples of you, Yuuri. Unless there are, and that’s how you did the--garden thing…”

Yuuri laughs. It’s a bright sound, a beautiful sound, and Viktor’s heart lifts just to hear it. “No, that’s only magic,” he says.

“Only magic,” Viktor says. “Well, thank you. Your ‘only magic’ saved my life.”

“It wasn’t just for you,” Yuuri says, after a moment’s pause. “I--I should tell you, I knew who you were on that beach. Before you said. I’d seen pictures--I admired you, for a long time. My father talked about you, and your father.”

“Did he tell you what happened?” Viktor asks. “How he came by my soul.”   


“Your father traded it to him,” Yuuri replies. “For safe passage home, when he was on the sea.”

“A firstborn son,” Viktor says. “He saved the Tsar of the Hawks when he was wounded, and in return he was given gifts. He traded one of those gifts away for safe passage, to your father. It--I don’t think it was his to trade away, much, but I don’t suppose I have a say in things.”

“Do you want a say in things?”

“It would be nice,” Viktor answers, although it feels silly when he says it aloud.

But Yuuri’s expression is very serious. “Alright. Would you like to marry me?”

“I--” he searches Yuuri’s face for a sign that he is joking, that he doesn’t mean it, that he is playing some game, and all he sees is fierce determination. “Yes. Yes! Of course I’d want to marry you, Yuuri. But he said--not that I wouldn’t like to think I’d know you anywhere, but--”

“My father will make it difficult,” Yuuri concludes. “But I’ll signal you. I’ll have something for you tomorrow morning. Until then, get some rest. The morning--”

“--is wiser than the evening,” Viktor finishes. For the first time, there is a thrill of excitement in his heart, a glint of hope. Tomorrow will be difficult, but if he can get through it, he will marry Yuuri.

He will marry Yuuri.

They’re the four most beautiful words he’s ever heard.

The next morning, he wakes to Yuuri standing at the foot of his bed. In his palm are two golden rings. “Good luck charms,” Yuuri whispers. “Here.”

He puts one on Viktor’s finger. Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand and places the other one without being asked, instinctively. “You’ll know it’s me,” he says, and then he goes before Viktor can even get out of bed.

When he gets to the throne room, they are already there, a perfect line of veiled figures. Viktor hadn’t noticed it before, but they’re all about the same height, about the same build. It is strange to think that it is so easy to make Yuuri, beautiful Yuuri, look like everyone else--just a bit of white fabric!

“Choose,” the Sea King commands. “If you can pick the same one of my children three times, you will have their hand.” He does not repeat the threat, but Viktor understands, already, what it means within the walls of this palace to fail.

He scans the line, uncertainty creeping up his throat. He looks again. Then he sees a glint--a flash of gold on the hand of the second-to-last in the line. “Him,” he says, and points.

The Sea King nods. “Turn your back.”

Viktor does, heart pounding in his throat. He closes his eyes for good measure as he hears footsteps and the ruffle of fabric, a quiet giggle. “Now,” the Sea King says, and Viktor turns back to see the line reformed. “Again.”

He looks, and looks. There is no giveaway, no different seam, no lifted veil, until again, that flash of gold--from the middle, this time. “There.”

“Very good,” the King says, and like before he seems almost reluctantly impressed. “Turn.”

The pantomime plays out once more, Viktor with his eyes closed and his back turned, Yuuri and his siblings rearranging themselves. When he turns back, they once again have turned back into a row of mirror images, and it takes Viktor one look, two, three, and still he does not know.

“Well?” the Sea King asks.

“I--” Viktor begins, and then there is a crook of a finger, the faintest flash, and Viktor lifts a hand and points, trembling a little, reaching outwards. “There. Him, there.”

The Sea King nods and Viktor steps forward and shifts back the veil and below it is Yuuri, beautiful Yuuri, smiling at him, and Viktor laughs, helplessly. He takes Yuuri’s hand, lays his thumb across the gold ring, marveling.

In three days’ time, he draws a veil back from Yuuri’s face once more as they are married on a crystal bridge in a garden grown in a nighttime and he feels for the first time no terrible fate looming over him.

***

Instead, over the months that follow--the months where the palace goes from unfamiliar and foreboding to something that is almost home, the months where he and Yuuri become further and further enmeshed in each other, something else creeps in. It is not fear of death, not that old lurking beast; it is not even uncertainty peering around the corner. No; it is a dull grey fog the settles to the floor almost unnoticeable until it climbs up his legs and begins to make his chest feel tight.

It is in bed one night when he inhales and the full weight seems to settle in his lungs and he begins to cry.

“Viktor?” alarm lifts Yuuri’s voice and he pulls Viktor close. “Viktor, what’s wrong?”

For a minute, Viktor only shakes his head, clutching at Yuuri for comfort and searching for the words. Why  _ is  _ he crying? He wants for nothing. He has Yuuri, and that is the most that he could hope for, here, beneath the sea--

Here, someplace he thought he might grow to love but--

Here.

“It’s nothing,” Viktor says, “I think I’m a little homesick, that’s all.”

“Well,” Yuuri says. “Let’s go to sleep, okay? The morning is wiser than the evening.”

Viktor nods, and sleeps, because he can always sleep beside Yuuri and his husband is usually right. Perhaps this strange slow grief will be gone when he wakes.

It isn’t, and Yuuri is, already standing at the bureau instead of asleep beside him. Viktor blinks at him, all sleepy confusion. Yuuri doesn’t like to wake early.

He turns at the creak of the mattress, and Viktor can see that his arms are full of folded clothes.

“Help me pack,” Yuuri says. “I think it’s time to go home.”

***

They creep out in the first fully dark hour of that night, packs strapped to their backs, on two silver horses from the stables. They are an hour’s journey beyond the walls when hoofbeats begin to echo behind them.

“Your father,” Viktor begins.

“His servants,” Yuuri says.

“They’ll catch up to us!”

“Let them,” Yuuri says. “They’ll never know it’s us.” And Viktor watched as he leapt off his horse and turned it into a well. The other horse became the water, and Viktor stood still as Yuuri drew a hand down his face and it turned into the visage of an old man, and then Yuuri was gone too and instead a ladle sat in his hand.

The servants were there almost before Viktor got over his surprise. “Have you seen two young men come this way?”

“No,” Viktor says, half-expecting them to see right through them, but the servants turn around and ride away.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, and then he is holding his husband in his arms instead of a ladle in his hand. “Yuuri, that was incredible.”

“My father will send them back,” Yuuri says, blushing and turning away to turn the horses back. “We have to keep going.”

So they ride on. It is two hours later that there are more hoofbeats. This time Viktor watches as the horses become trees, feels his garments become the robes of a priest and watches Yuuri change from a man to a church.

“Have you seen two young men pass by your church?” the servant asks this time, leaning over the saddle, breathing hard.

“No,” Viktor replies, and watches them turn and go.

“Let’s go home,” Yuuri says with a hand on his arm before he can turn back, already returned along with the horses to what he really is.

But as they ride, again the hoofbeats echo, and this time with it a horn rings out.

“What shall we be this time?” Viktor asks.

But when he looks, Yuuri has gone pale. “My father is with them,” he says. “He’ll see right through my magic.”

“You’ve taken us this far,” Viktor says, and he means it as a comfort, but Yuuri looks distraught.

“Not far enough,” he replies.

“Let me bring us a bit farther,” Viktor says, racking his brains. He has no magic, not like Yuuri. He is a good rider, but they will not outride the Sea King. The only thing that is special about him is that once his father saved the life of the Tsar of the Hawks, and the Hawk felt indebted to him and--

“Tsar Hawk!” he shouts into the air. Yuuri startles. “Tsar Hawk! My father once saved you and I would ask that you now save me and my husband and help us come home!”   


The hoofbeats and horn grows louder. The shape of the Sea King forms on the horizon, and Viktor doubts, and then come the wingbeats.

“Viktor Nikiforov!” the Hawk cries. It easily seizes Viktor by the shoulders in one broad talon and Yuuri in the other, and they are lifted up, up, and he can see the anger on the Sea King’s face below them, and the horses slowing, confused, bereft of their riders. And as they lift up he can see the borders of the kingdom, and far behind them the palace with the garden and the crystal bridge and Yuuri’s twelve siblings. The only sound that carries up with them are the beating wings and Yuuri laughing and Viktor watches him and the rising sun beyond as the hawk carries them up into the wiser morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who supported the Fairy Tale Zine, and our lovely mods, who did an incredible job. I'm very grateful to have been a part of this project.
> 
> If you can, please leave a comment--they mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.


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